He put the tee in Kansas City; now this ambassador of KC pride is closing his City Market outpost

A small storefront next to the famed Arabia Steamboat Museum at Kansas City’s City Market is closing its doors after nearly a decade — selling close to $2 million in T-shirts over the course of its run, the owner said, and becoming a de facto visitor’s center for people sharing Dave Lindahl’s passion.

“I’m selling pride in the city,” said Lindahl, founder of HyperKC at 400 Grand Blvd, Suite 418. “I’m selling people the opportunity to show that they love Kansas City, to kind of build our local pride and do that through the artwork of the artist.”

The shop is set to close at the end of September, when its lease expires. Operated for nine years with outside help only from part-time employees, Lindahl said he’s reached the point where he wants to spend his time differently.

“Selling T-shirts is not my passion,” he said, noting the closure marked a bittersweet choice to leave prime real estate in the beloved neighborhood. “Bringing people together is my passion.”

“There are some elements of that at the store — but it’s not enough anymore,” Lindahl continued. “I want to do something that’s much more focused on my interests.”

The store has been particularly busy since Lindahl announced his plans and offered a closeout sale, he said, with some customers coming back simply to say goodbye.

HyperKC’s storefront at 400 Grand Blvd, Suite 418, in Kansas City’s City Market; courtesy photo

Selling the stories behind the shirts

By 2020, HyperKC was already more than an apparel shop, Lindahl said.

The City Market store had become an informal landing spot for visitors, with the owner regularly pointing tourists toward Kansas City destinations, restaurants and neighborhoods.

That community-facing role remained one of the elements of entrepreneurship that Lindahl valued most.

“I’ll miss talking to customers about Kansas City,” he said. “Talking to visitors, how to check out all the attractions in Kansas City.”

The shirts themselves were built around that same idea. Instead of having one artist define the HyperKC brand, Lindahl worked with a collection of Kansas City-area artists, giving each an opportunity to bring a different perspective and style to the collection.

The artists also received a share of the sales, he said.

“I can have a collection of shirts by multiple artists, and each artist can have a different perspective and a different style,” said Lindahl. “We can create a bigger range of shirts, and then all those artists are partners in the business.”

For Lindahl, the relationship was about more than another revenue stream for artists who already had full-time jobs. It was also a way to put local creative work in front of people who might otherwise never encounter it, he said.

Click here to check out previous HyperKC collections, some of which are still part of the in-store closeout.

 

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Life after HyperKC

Lindahl doesn’t have another business venture waiting in the wings, he said, and that’s intentional.

“Because I don’t want it to cloud my decision making now,” Lindahl explained.

Instead, he wants to experiment.

For roughly three decades, Lindahl has organized volleyball events, encouraging human connections through pickup games and other gatherings. Five couples have even told him they got married after meeting through one of his events, he said.

Now Lindahl wants to take that community-building work beyond volleyball.

“I really like bringing people together and sort of fostering the things that society needs, which is people knowing each other in person,” said Lindahl.

That could mean a podcast, small meetup groups, larger gatherings at community centers or other concepts that don’t necessarily have a business model attached to them from Day 1, he suggested.

“I want to try like little get-togethers, bigger get-togethers,” Lindahl said. “I just want to keep seeing what works, what sticks.”

Dave Lindahl, founder of HyperKC; photo by Taylor Wilmore, Startland News

The next way to connect

It’s all about getting people in the same room, Lindahl emphasized, noting social media can make it easy for people to make assumptions about their fellow community members without ever actually getting to know each other.

His hope is to create spaces where people can get together face-to-face, form relationships, and have real conversations.

“I really want to bring people together in person and foster conversation, so people can start to see each other more deeply,” said Lindahl.

That mission isn’t entirely new. In many ways, he said, it’s been present at HyperKC all along — in the conversations with customers at the City Market storefront, the relationships with artists, and the sense of place built into the brand.

Now, Lindahl envisions an opportunity to make that throughline the work itself. His immediate task: finishing the closeout, selling the remaining inventory and finding homes for the store’s fixtures and supplies.

Customers who want to support Lindahl beyond the store should watch HyperKC’s social media, where he plans to share information about future gatherings and projects, he said.

“I found a new purpose, and I found a new way to go after that purpose,” Lindahl added.